New production facility for Pancosma

Pancosma SA, in association with its industrial partner, the Erbo Group, has announced the opening of a new spouted bed granulation and micro encapsulation unit at Bützberg in Switzerland as a strategic joint venture operation.

The plant will be used to develop and manufacture animal nutrition products. Daniel Kofel, Pancosma’s CEO said: “The investment of over EUR 6 million into this exciting technology is crucial to the long term growth of the company."

Kofel added: "The strategy of Pancosma is to bring innovative products to the market through a process of fundamental research into the activity of specific molecules, the formulation of the basal nutrition product and finally which physical form can deliver optimum quality and efficacy.”

The Erbo Group, through its Spraytec business unit, specialises in feed additives production technology. The company has considerable experience in manufacturing spray dried, spray chilled and encapsulated products.

Technological advantages

Kofel said there are a number of advantages of spouted bed granulation compared to the more traditional fluidised bed method. “The most important advantage is that the feed additive is produced using lower temperatures and lower airflows. This permits the incorporation of more sensitive ingredients such as flavours and plant extracts.”

In addition, the formulation of the basic “onion shell” shaped particle is more precise and efficient enabling the construction of a more stable and, if needed, a controlled release product.

“There is considerable flexibility in controlling mode of action by arranging the physical shape of the finished particle which can range from the “onion shell” to micro-encapsulation, agglomeration or instantisation for oil and water soluble materials,” Kofel added.

Challenges

The biggest challenge is to combine two or more stand alone products together into one in order to take advantage of a specific physical structure.

This procedure will be called TakTik Technology with the first product TakTik X-IN recently launched on the international market. The product is a combination of the sweetener Sucram and a group of bioactive and flavouring compounds.

The overall strategy of Pancosma is ultimately to have 80% of all products manufactured at the plant.